Tahiti-Pacifique Magazine: 1 August 1999
MEDIA: HYSTERIA IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC
Tahiti-Pacifique editor and publisher Alex du Prel has been among the media targets of the Pangea "cyberspace war". Here he replies with his side of the controversy.
By ALEX DU PREL
TO ALL who have been inundated with E-mails (and hate-mails) from S.Y.
Pangea, please allow a short comment on this regettable affair :
This episode is a perfect example of stupid stubbornness which brought to a
sad ending what should have been the sailing cruise of a life-time.
Upon arrival in French Polynesia, instead of posting a bond on a savings
account (with interest paid) that would have been returned to them upon
leaving our islands, the Klemmps prefered to start a legal fight.
The true reason of their refusal to post bond soon became clear: they
wanted actually to settle in F.P as is proven by their application for a
permanent résidency permit.
After losing a proper and fair legal fight in French courts in Tahiti and
thus being refused a visa extention, these people had to sail to Hawaii.
There they certainly discovered that the US Immigration and Naturalisation
Service are a much tougher, more severe bunch than the polite and relaxed
French gendarme in the Marquesan islands, that husband Achim cannot stay in
the USA evenso he is married to a US citizen and has to return to beautiful
Germany to apply for permanent residency in the USA.
Being the only ones responsible for the disastrous flop of their own long
prepared cruise, but unable to accept this evidence, furious, they now have
to blame others for it.
There is the explanation for the present E-mail and website hate and pure
slander campaign against :
Please don't try to have European laws applied here, it makes no sense.
Didn't you sail all the way out here to escape germanistic law and order?"
Thank you for reading these lines.
Greetings from the South Pacific ‹ peaceful again.
_________________________________________
"Cool down. Just pay the caution but insist in putting it on a US dollar
savings account that pays interest.
What is sad, might even be considered criminal, is that they have not
posted the truth concerning the futility of their action on their
website and thus may induce other European
yachts to follow their steps, thereby also endangering their own cruises.
Alex W. du PREL
Directeur de la Publication / Publisher and editor
TAHITI-PACIFIQUE Magazine
B.P. 368, MOOREA, French Polynesia
E-mail : tahitipm@mail.pf
Tel : (+689) 56 28 94
Fax : (+689) 56 30 07
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